I was reading the Shoemoney blog today when I saw his post of Sage Lewis’ video debating if SEO is dead. It is funny to me that many people I have seen that seem to be on opposite sides of this argument are really saying the same thing and completely agree with each other but are confused on terminology.

I agree, SEO is dying. It isn’t quite dead yet, but is heading toward extinction as Google continues to grow and incorporate more human generated information into it’s algorithm. However, SEOs will continue to thrive as they move away from tricking the algorithms and more toward practicing UEO (User Experience Optimization) which good SEOs are already doing.

Typically, the phrase SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is used to describe tweaking your website to take advantage of known deficiencies in search engine algorithms in order to increase your rankings for particular key terms. SEO, if done properly, works. However, many of the known search engine algorithm deficiencies are constantly being improved and modified so that many SEO tweaks only have a short term effect. I understand that the term SEO has grown to often encompass more than this, but if you poll around, you’ll see that this is most people’s understanding of the term.

It is the mission of search engine companies to provide users with the best search experience possible by feeding them the information they desire. The search engines attempt to cater completely to the user and their needs. With SEO, we have created a struggle between the search engines and website owners in which we fight to “fool” the engines in falsely ranking our sites.

What we should be focusing on is UEO (User Experience Optimization) and making sure we optimize our website to provide our users with the information they desire in a format that is easy for them to browse. With UEO, website owners work more in harmony with search engines as we both share the same goal of quality content that is easily accessible.

When performing UEO on your website, don’t worry about the search engine rankings. If you build quality sites that are user friendly, search engine love will follow. Considering UEO when developing your sites will lead to much longer, more sustainable search engine ranking results.